Black Cat 2 - All Black Cats Are Not Alike

Jun

7

Black Cat 2 - All Black Cats Are Not Alike

≡ Category: Action, Hong Kong, Movie Reviews By Country, Worth A Look |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action
Director: Stephen Shin
Year: 1992

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK

After the success of Black Cat, director/producer Stephen Shin decided to spend a lot more money on the sequel. Filmed on three continents, with lots of pyrotechnics, it almost seems like this was Stephen Shin attempt at an action picture for international consumption, except that he has all of the characters, including Americans and Russians, speak flawless Cantonese.

Once again, director Stephen Shin performs a minor miracle — none of the gweilo actors are embarrassing.

There is alot of American style action in Black Cat 2. There’s a ski chase which is straight out of a James Bond flick. Lots of people get machine gunned. An airplane blows up. Actually, it’s not badly done, and for Hong Kong audiences, it must have been kind of a thrill to see a home grown production with these kinds of stunts and pyrotechnics.

More entertaining, for Westerners, is a ton of high quality martial arts choreography and some pretty nifty stunts, courtesy of action director Poon Kin-Gwan, who also worked on the first film.

And yet, with all of the obvious talent behind the camera (Black Cat 2 looks just as good as it’s predecessor), the film just isn’t very good. Why?

The problem starts with the script by Sin Gam-Ching, Ivy Lee, and James Fung.

After the disastrous events of the first film, the CIA has Catherine’s memory erased and has a chip implanted into her brain so that she has no choice but to obey orders. That’s kind of logical, but it eliminates all of the moral quandaries that made the film so entertaining. Poor Catherine (Jade Leung) is now basically a robot. She doesn’t even know who she is. That’s sad, but without choices, all the physical risks Catherine takes don’t have much emotional weight. She may be walking around, but she’s basically dead.

A second mistake: Simon Yam is gone from the cast. The only person who has any contact with Catherine is Robin (Robin Shou), a CIA agent who doesn’t approve of how the agency is using her. Unlike Simon Yam’s Brian, Robin just isn’t a very interesting character.

So, what you’ve got with Black Cat 2 is plenty of action and no emotional interest whatsoever. While the filmmaking quality is fairly high, it’s not enough for me to recommend Black Cat 2, except maybe for die hard Hong Kong action junkies.